Chipotle Chicken and Rice

Chipotle Chicken and Rice provides alternate instructions for using this as a filling for quesadillas. We have done both the original recipe, and we have used the alternate instructions to make tacos topped with sour cream and baby greens. The chipotle that the recipe calls for provides plenty of flavor, either way. When I open a new can of chipotle chilis in adobo, I whiz the whole thing up in a blender and then freeze the puree in ice cube trays to use in recipes like this. The alternate instructions say to leave out both the water and the rice; the mixture seemed awfully dry so I added just 1/2 cup of water and that evaporated off during the cooking time.

Kung Pao Chicken Tacos

Kung Pao Chicken Tacos was a bit of a surprise for me. When I chose it out of our Recipes to Try binder, it was with the expectation that we would try it, think it was ho hum, and recycle the paper it was printed on. Instead, it turned out to be a sleeper hit! It is mild, which makes it appropriate for the kids. It makes a tasty taco and comes together pretty quickly. Our oldest daughter somewhere along the line decided that she doesn’t like sweet peppers, but she does like poblanos. As a result, we now usually use poblanos instead of the sweet peppers; I like it both ways. The whole family enjoys this and it has become a regular part of our menu plan.

Thai-Style Chicken Legs

Thai-Style Chicken Legs is a fantastic summer recipe. Flavored with cilantro, garlic and fish sauce, and then cooked on a grill, this is one of the dinners that I look forward to when the weather gets warm and sunny. Cilantro looks great in the grocery store this time of year, too. It can be sort of hit and miss in the fall and winter. Since this recipe only calls for one quarter cup of chopped cilantro, it also works well in a “week of cilantro,” in which I plan multiple recipes in one week that call for cilantro in order to waste less of it. Searching this blog for the term “cilantro” will give you a selection of recipes to consider when menu planning.

If you don’t have a grill, or simply don’t want to go to the trouble of using your grill, you can also bake this in your oven, although I will say the grilled flavor adds something special to the final product. The blogger who wrote this recipe recommends serving the chicken with her mango slaw, which we’ve tried and is tasty, but grilled corn on the cob is nice too, and a bit simpler.

Khao Man Gai

Khao Man Gai is something that I was first exposed to eating at a food cart downtown. The dish is a simple poached chicken with rice but it’s the sauce that makes it. Typical of Thai food, the sauce is a little bit sweet, a little bit salty, with a zing from fresh ginger and bird’s eye chilies. With this recipe, my ability to eat this dish is not limited to my ability to get downtown for lunch during the week, a rare occurence. Even so, this is a weekend dish, but the fact that the sauce really does freeze well makes things a bit easier to accomplish. In addition, after poaching the chicken, a light chicken broth is left behind. We always save this in the freezer as well. While it doesn’t have as much body as our regular homemade chicken stock, it can be used in many recipes in place of water and in turn add much more flavor.

Grilled Jerk Chicken

Grilled Jerk Chicken is a recent addition to our repertoire, but I think it is worth posting. Normally, I exercise what I call the “Third Time’s a Charm” rule. What this means is that sometimes we will enjoy a recipe the first time we make it, but the second or third time we’ll change our minds and decide it’s actually underwhelming and not worth continuing to hold on to. If a recipe can get past the third try, it has a tendency to stick for years.

Nevertheless, we have been looking for a good, basic jerk recipe for years and haven’t been able to find one until now, and I’m happy to share it. Many recipes that we have tried included too many dried spices that ultimately tasted gritty on the tongue. We tried this one recently for a barbecue and it was definitely a hit. The taste is fresh with a bit of spice on the end, but not too much. How much spice you get can easily be controlled by how many scotch bonnet or habanero peppers you use. We used orange habaneros because I rarely see scotch bonnets here. We followed the recipe exactly and threw the habaneros, whole, into the blender with everything else.

The original recipe calls for chicken breasts, but we used wings, legs and thighs instead. We also have not tried the accompanying watermelon salsa. We weren’t sure if the Coleman’s mustard called for meant the dried or the prepared, but all we could find was the dried so we used that. It seems to have worked.

Avocado Mango Chicken

Avocado Mango Chicken is a recipe that doesn’t seem like it should work. With Worcestershire sauce and soy sauce in the marinade, you wouldn’t think that it would go well with an avocado mango salsa, but it is delicious. Rather than serving a corn tortilla on the side, like the recipe suggests, I like to serve the cooked chicken chopped, on the tortillas like tacos, with the salsa on top. We use slightly more salt than is called for, but otherwise we do this as written. I also like to use just the salsa by itself on No Waste Tacos de Carnitas. Unfortunately, the salsa doesn’t keep well, so we try not to make more than we think we can consume in a single meal.

Introducing an avocado into any meal can make meal planning challenging, since the avocado has a fairly narrow window of perfect eating. One trick we have learned, is that uncut avocados can be placed in the refrigerator when they are ready to eat. This will slow the ripening process and give you a couple more days’ worth of potential perfect eating. When you buy groceries exactly once a week like I do, this is a bonus. I can grocery shop on Sunday or Monday and I can still plan this recipe on a Friday and not have to worry that the avocado will be brown and yucky by the time I need it.

Sunny’s Double-Decker Blackened Honey Chicken

Sunny’s Double-Decker Blackened Honey Chicken is supposed to be cooked on a grill underneath a pan of Accordion Sweet Potatoes. The sweet potato recipe is dairy-heavy and I really prefer my sweet potatoes unadulterated anyway, so all I really wanted was the chicken. To account for the weight difference between an empty cast iron skillet and one full of sweet potatoes, I added a second, slightly smaller, cast iron skillet on top. The chicken turned out surprisingly juicy and flavorful. We tried this recipe for the first time last summer, and by the end of the summer we had already repeated it several times. We have never drizzled it with honey at the end. We just forgot the first time, and after that, decided it really didn’t need it. I bet it’s good, though.

Slow-Cooker Chicken Tikka Masala

Slow-Cooker Chicken Tikka Masala is a favorite of the entire family. It has a hint of Indian spice, without being too spicy for the kids.  If you want to follow all of the cooking instructions, you can get it ready the night before, store in the refrigerator, and then start up the slow-cooker in the morning. You can skip the cilantro; it’s just a garnish. We serve it with jasmine rice made in our rice steamer.

Crock Pot Teriyaki Chicken

Crock Pot Teriyaki Chicken is a simple and tasty way to cook chicken in your crock pot. I love this recipe because it calls for simple ingredients like soy sauce and red wine vinegar instead of bottled teriyaki sauce. I like to use dark meat chicken for this, and in my crock pot it really can’t go more than four or five hours. All crock pots are different, though; it’s important to know yours. For four pounds of dark meat on-the-bone chicken, I double the sauce portion of the recipe. I always serve the resulting teriyaki chicken over white rice cooked in my rice steamer. The leftovers are wonderful reheated for lunch the next day, as well.

Ike’s Vietnamese Fish Sauce Wings

Ike’s Vietnamese Fish Sauce Wings is presumably the recipe that Andy Ricker used for his famous wings at his Portland, OR restaurant, Pok Pok, a fantastic restaurant that sadly did not survive the COVID-19 epidemic.  My only consolation is that we have this recipe; try it! The wings are deep fried, which increases not just the difficulty level, but also makes them more labor-intensive. We have learned through experience, though, that if you’re not feeling up to deep-frying, these wings are also delicious grilled. If fish sauce isn’t already a part of your pantry, I should warn you, it smells exactly like what it’s made out of — essentially rotten fish. Once in the food, however, it gives things a salty, umami flavor that you can’t get with anything else. The best place to buy fish sauce is in your local mom-and-pop Asian grocery. I’m not big on unnecessary garnishes, so I leave off the cilantro and the mint unless I already happen to have some.